When I was 6 years old, my uncle was my hero. He was tall, drove his own car, and had a cool cellphone. What else could someone want in life?
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How to be a Data-Driven Product Manager (1 of 3)
As a PM, a big part of your job is collecting and making sense of data to inform product decisions. The question that inevitably comes up is, “What data should we look at?” Here are a few data sources to get started. First, usage analytics.
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I'm a high-caliber young person – What should I do with my life?
(SUCCESSFUL) CAREER = SKILLS + OPPORTUNITIES
Don't have a rigid "career plan" – The world is changing too rapidly and life is too complex for anyone to accurately predict the future. Be flexible.
Develop skills that are rare & valuable.
Be on the lookout for opportunities with the best risk-reward ratios.
OPPORTUNITIES - THERE ARE TWO KINDS.
The first will present itself to you (ex: your friends are starting an exciting company and want you to join)
The latter you may go out and create. (ex: Last year, someone working at McKinsey in the UK reached to me via Linkedin for a Product role at Pathao because they wanted an experience in frontier markets)
Either way, the ability to properly assess opportunities based on risk-reward is vitally important.
SKILLS - THERE ARE TWO KINDS.
Be Michael Phelps - Top 1% of their field. Gifted with the right physique and fanatically driven to train and reach the zenith of their field.
Be Shakib Al Hasan - Top 25% in multiple skills/fields. In 2021, if you're an 80th percentile programmer + communicator + designer, you're extremely well-placed for financial success. This is because this combination is both rare and valuable. This brings us to...
Capitalism rewards people with skills (or a combination of skills) that are both rare and valuable.
WHAT SKILLS (OR COMBINATION OF SKILLS) ARE RARE & VALUABLE?
In my opinion, these 5 skills (or a mix of them) are quite valuable. In terms of hard skills (or educational ones) – anything technical is a great choice. More on this later.
Communication: Communicating skilfully means conveying information so that it changes people’s behavior… or at least probes their thinking. Most technical people quaintly underestimate this skill. They expect good ideas to prevail based on merit. Good ideas are not Immiscible like oil. They don't necessarily surface because of their innate quality. Ideas are like precious metals. They need to be dug out, polished and marketed to have economic value.
Leadership: Learn how to lead people. Whether it’s through a university club (ex: NSU YEF / IBA CC) or practical work experience (ex: from a good manager at your job). Even if you choose to be an individual contributor, knowing how to lead/manage a team makes you less reliant on others for organizing things.
Sales: Selling doesn’t mean talking someone into buying things they don’t need. It means finding common ground with people and showing them your point of view.
Finance: Being financially literate is a huge advantage. The good news is that there are very easy wins. Get better at personal finance. (ex: know how your taxes are calculated). Learn how to read financial statements (ex: Balance sheets, income statements) Finally, learn more about how capital markets work, internationally. That last bit is important (and overlooked), which brings us to…
Global: The world is vast. It is teeming with people, capital, and opportunities. But you’ll never come across it if you’re stuck in your 9-5 and Dhaka traffic. The internet is your oyster, explore it. Meet people. Travel. Open your mind.
I will dissect opportunities in a future post.
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